A major motivation in the modern dispute resolution movement has been to increase and improve parties’ decision-making in their legal disputes. Historically, parties often had little opportunity to exercise much control after they retained attorneys to handle their disputes. Attorneys often acted paternalistically, taking control over virtually every aspect of the cases. The legal system … Continue reading Focus on Party Decision-Making
I had the good fortune to be Len Riskin’s colleague from 2000, when I arrived in Missouri, until he moved to the University of Florida in 2007. He now is a Visiting Professor of Law and Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Center on Negotiation, Mediation, and Restorative Justice at Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law … Continue reading Len Riskin Pulls It All Together in Managing Conflict Mindfully
This was the question I had to answer when planning a lecture. I was a speaker in a course offered by the Universidad Monteavila in Caracas, Venezuela. My wonderful colleague, Rafael Gely, organized this collaboration with Missouri’s DR Center to provide a series of speakers, including me. My Venezuelan colleague told me that I could … Continue reading If You Had Only One Hour to Describe ADR, What Would You Say?
The good folks at the Association for Conflict Resolution of Greater New York and CUNY Dispute Resolution Center at John Jay College invited me to give a talk as part of their monthly breakfast series. Last week, I gave a presentation, Helping Parties Make Decisions About What’s Really Important, which synthesizes ideas I have been … Continue reading Concepts That Can Help Practitioners Help Parties Make Decisions in Disputes
This post summarizes presentations, data collected, and discussion in the “Risky Business: A Toolbox for Managing Litigation Interests and Risks” program on February 28, 2020 at CPR’s annual meeting. There never is enough time to cover everything you want to say, so this post elaborates the discussion at the program. Based on our book, Litigation … Continue reading LIRA @ CPR
Everyone talks about knowing one’s BATNA in negotiation and mediation. But that’s a lot easier said than done. In litigated cases, the value of the BATNA usually is the expected trial outcome, but that is notoriously hard to predict for many reasons. The outcome of numerous legal and factual issues may depend on the evidence, … Continue reading How to Calculate and Use BATNAs and Bottom Lines with LIRA
I recently visited our DR friends and colleagues at Quinnipiac, courtesy of an invitation from Charlie Pillsbury, the co-director of their Center on Dispute Resolution. He invited me to give a talk as part of the Quinnipiac-Yale Dispute Resolution Workshop. Using the patented Stone Soup process of systematically eliciting input from audiences, I tested some … Continue reading How Can Practitioners Help Clients Assess Their Interests and Risks in Litigation?
Virtually everyone in our field knows about the wonderful book, Difficult Conversations: How to Discuss What Matters Most, by Douglas Stone, Bruce Patton, and Sheila Heen. It focuses on everyday conversations and not just crystalized disputes. It describes how people can better understand what is (and is not) happening in their interactions, identify erroneous assumptions, … Continue reading Difficult Conversations in the Modern Era of (Anti-)Social Media
I think that one of our main missions in the DR field is to promote constructive engagement in conflict. We know that conflict is inevitable and it can be constructive and/or destructive. Often, when people are in conflict, it is very destructive and everyone just wants to end the conflict as quickly as possible while … Continue reading Touching Story of Relationship of Constructive Engagement in Conflict
In June, John Kiernan gave a talk in which he argued that the ADR field has reached a first level of maturity but “ADR remains far short of its full, what might be called ‘level two maturity.’” He gave the talk at a luncheon of Association for Conflict Resolution of Greater New York, where he … Continue reading How to Reach “Level Two Maturity” in Handling Civil Disputes
